In a traditional on-line currency market, a trade occurs through three steps: (1) the trader specifies to a dealer the currency pair and the amount that he would to trade (but does not specify whether he would like to buy or sell); (2) the dealer specifies to the trader both a bid and an ask price and gives the trader several seconds to respond (the dealer not knowing whether the trader will buy, sell, or reject the offer); and (3) the trader either rejects the offer or specifies whether he is buying or selling (his response must occur within a time frame of a few seconds).
But performing such a three-way handshake over the Internet is somewhat impractical because of Internet delays: the trader might not actually have a few seconds to respond before the dealer withdraws the offer. Thus, there is a need for a system and method of on-line currency trading that is based on a trading model that is superior to the three-way handshake described above.
Another problem is that many corporations have firewalls that restrict access to the corporate network, and that typically restrict access to the Internet (and to well-known services such as email, the World Wide Web, etc.) from within the corporation. This inhibits the ability of on-line trading systems to access information from and transfer information to users behind corporate firewalls.